

The world is big enough to provide plenty of interesting scenery and interaction points, without becoming so mammoth that you constantly need to check in with a map.

You can explore the 3D world at your leisure and interact with the numerous characters that inhabit the island as you see fit.

The game quickly thrusts you into creepy Flotsam Island. That’s how you’ll get your introduction to several key elements of Monkey Island’s gameplay: you need to find objects to add to your inventory, interact with other objects using your inventory, and occasionally combine various items you hold (like, say, flat root beer and breath mints, or plant roots, a barrel of grog, and those same breath mints when you spill your first batch) to create something new. To do so, you quickly learn, Threepwood must dip his cutlass in fizzy root beer-which, of course, requires finding some root beer. When the first episode (“Launch of the Screaming Narwhal”) begins, it opens with a prelude of sorts: Threepwood needs to (once again) rescue Elaine from the clutches of evil LeChuck. I found the mouse controls unsatisfying overall, instead I relied on the keyboard with occasional clicks on the specific object I wanted Threepwood to focus on. You can control Threepwood using either your mouse-by clicking and dragging in the direction you want him to go-or the keyboard. The cut-scenes (and there are many of them) and the gameplay itself feature a lush, 3D look, and my MacBook Pro was able to handle it all without stuttering.
